NVIDIA launching GeForce 9 series next February?

Details are unsurprisingly light on this one, but DigiTimes has it that NVIDIA is gearing up to launch its next-generation GPU just after the Lunar New Year in February 2008. Reportedly, "sources at graphics card makers" have revealed that the GeForce 9 series will include the D9E -- a "high-end product that adopts 65-nanometer manufacturing," supports DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 -- and the mid-range D9P, which will supposedly adopt 55-nanometer processing. Apparently, the former will be the first product in the new family, while the latter won't see light until June, but of course, we'd take every ounce of this with a healthy serving of salt for the time being.

[Slick_Gecko @ Nov 30th 2007 3:30PM]

I want one!

[dmdallas @ Nov 30th 2007 7:14PM]

I want two!

[Deputy Doffoos @ Nov 30th 2007 8:56PM]

I want free

[David Clark @ Nov 30th 2007 10:33PM]

I'll settle for an 8800, but at a much lower price.

[Kurian @ Dec 1st 2007 12:20AM]

Yes.. After everyone who bought 8800s took it up the ass from nvidia.

[feffrey @ Dec 1st 2007 12:40AM]

and I just bought a 8800 GT.
sigh.......

[lutton @ Nov 30th 2007 3:33PM]

I'm interested in the next SLI chipset. Any word on that yet?

[PhoR11 @ Nov 30th 2007 3:33PM]

I remember reading a couple months ago that they were aiming for a late November 2007 release... /cry

[rzlmlchm009 @ Nov 30th 2007 3:44PM]

Crap! I just bought a GeForce 7 series this year. Now I'm even further behind.

[Joe @ Nov 30th 2007 3:44PM]

Hmmm... 8800GT now or wait?

[Corey @ Nov 30th 2007 3:54PM]

How about wait until the 9-series comes out, and THEN buy an 8800GT? I'd expect a nice price drop around that time.

[EngadgetFanBoi @ Nov 30th 2007 5:18PM]

I have my doubts as to any significant price drop for the 8800 gt's as they are already rather low in price (maybe $50 or less, maybe). The new board will likely be a high-end board priced at $500-$700, so it is in no way competing with the 8800 gt; however, it does compete with a couple of them in SLI.

So that is to say, if you were thinking about picking up a couple of 8800 gt's to run in SLI, your money might be better served waiting a bit and picking up one of those bad boys. This is especially true when considering dx10 games like Crysis cannot run with all the bells and whistles on your 24" 1920x1200 monitors with 2 8800 gt's.

[Wwhat @ Nov 30th 2007 5:18PM]

Geez, that's a bit cheap isn't it? it's not like the current crop is priced that high.
(although if you use american currency you might feel you still can't afford it maybe)

[JohnTitor @ Nov 30th 2007 5:29PM]

nVIDIA does NOT do price drops
everyone's always talking about it but no one seems to realize big price drops never happens
what does happen is the card eventually gets discontinued for a new one

that's the big down fall of SLI is that its good idea but when you're ready for a 2nd card, the price is shitty compared to the newer cards

[mike @ Dec 1st 2007 5:20AM]

@cory
that would actually be kind of dumb, instead he should wait for the 9 series, then the gt will drop in price probably to $150, so then he should use that $150 to get the 9600gt, which will have even better performance than the 8800gt

the next series mid range is usually better than the last series highend, and smarter like DX10.1 vs. DX10, etc.

[k4m1k4z3 @ Dec 1st 2007 4:24PM]

maybe nVIDIA doesn't do price drops, but I am sure you could find tons people selling their 8800s on ebay for a lower price just because they want to get rid of them to upgrade

[makishima @ Nov 30th 2007 3:46PM]

mmm Sounds like building a new comp for myself might be a little closer than i thought ^_^

[japroach @ Nov 30th 2007 5:25PM]

"The 8800 series, codenamed G80, was launched on November 8, 2006"

So thats what 14-15 months? 6000 series to 7000 series was about the same if not a few months less.

[LinuxIdiot @ Nov 30th 2007 3:54PM]

woohoo that means by the time I am ready to build my next tower, hopefully the 8800 series would have gone down in price so I can get more bang for the buck!

[riffrocker134 @ Nov 30th 2007 4:02PM]

I got my laptop with a 7 series and a 32bit Core 2 duo right before the 8 series came out, and there were only 64bit laptop cpus.

[Patuxentbball @ Nov 30th 2007 4:39PM]

Core2Duos are capable of 32bit and 64 bit, it's your flavor of OS that determines what you take advantage of.

New tower build is closer than I thought.

[Matt @ Nov 30th 2007 4:06PM]

I wonder how long after release it will take for Nvidia to write drivers which work for this hardware. Color me jaded but I'm still waiting for custom resolutions for the current set of hardware. I hope the are released with a decent driver set but I wouldn't count on it.

[DarKLorDant @ Nov 30th 2007 4:15PM]

Im kinda glad the new series is coming out soon, this way I can just get myself another 8800 GTX for a fraction of the price, hopefully.

[EngadgetFanBoi @ Nov 30th 2007 5:35PM]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but how old is the 7900 gtx? Over a year and a half?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127097R

Its launch price was $500 and is currently being sold for $379 for an open box on newegg.

The fact is, companies do not mark down their high end products that much. The 8800 GTX probably won't be marked down that much. Another great example of this kind of pricing is Intel's Extreme processors. The X6800 was launched for $999 and is a 2.93GHz Dual Core "Core 2 Duo" processor. More recently, the E6850 came out, which is a 3.0GHz Dual Core "Core 2 Duo." The E6850 is currently 280 on new egg, while the X6800 is 975 - they have nearly identical performance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115001
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028

[Naveed @ Dec 1st 2007 11:08AM]

but of course on the extreme you can mess raise the multipliers

[Contrapositive @ Dec 30th 2007 3:18AM]

My 6800 GT runs Crysis at XP Hacked Very High settings 4xAA 16xAF with 200 FPS running at a resolution of 20x5 (Widescreen, it's nice, I know.).

[Unbangyourmom @ Nov 30th 2007 4:22PM]

I bet it will be call the Geforce 9800Pro

[Ayle @ Nov 30th 2007 5:30PM]

can they really do that?

[Whitey @ Nov 30th 2007 4:24PM]

Jeesus, anyone else think that PC hardware is advancing too fast? It seems only yesterday the 8800 series came out.

[EngadgetFanBoi @ Nov 30th 2007 5:27PM]

Hardware companies are slowly realizing that yearly updates are the most profitable way to go. Some companies that exemplify this strategy are Apple, Intel, and Nvidia.

I do not at all think that PC hardware is moving too fast; if anything, it is moving too slowly. The increasing speed with which these updates are coming spells more improvement for the end user. This is probably most clear with Intel's great advancements in computing which spells faster, smaller, more energy efficient chips, helping power users and mobile users especially.

[Wwhat @ Nov 30th 2007 5:25PM]

Nope, I think saying the next generation will be here in 6 months from now in mid 2008, while the 8 series has been out since 2006 already, isn't exactly rushing generations.
I quote wikipedia (seem correct on this):
"The 8800 series, codenamed G80, was launched on November 8, 2006"

[captain underpants and the bringdown gang @ Dec 2nd 2007 12:41AM]

you should kill yourself (metaphorically of course) for uttering such nonsense.

[devurandom @ Nov 30th 2007 4:32PM]

will it support opengl 3.0?

[Andir3.0 @ Nov 30th 2007 5:14PM]

Good question!

[ethana2 @ Nov 30th 2007 5:42PM]

I hope so.

..but I still just want a coprocessor on a card. I want to use it for

physics via bullet
folding@home
ray tracing and baking in blender
latest dirac and ogg spec encoding/decoding
mixing high definition sound in 3d
parallel makefile .c compilation with gcc

...you know, once all the software catches up. Will this series be what I need, or do I still just stick to my Radeon 9200SE and 2.8 GHz CPU, and keep waiting?
I'm not going to get a quad core. I don't want 4 cisc cores. I want 256 risc/vector cores.

[oranda @ Jan 14th 2008 3:35PM]

@ethana2

Common misconception. Every Intel x86 core since the Pentium Pro/II has been a RISC processor. They still accept CISC instructions, but those instructions are internally broken down into RISC ops and sequenced the same as any other RISC instruction would be. This is actually a lot more efficient than most people realize, as the CISC instructions are more compact and thus take up less space in cache and on the buses, thereby acting as a sort of rudimentary (but effective) data compression, freeing up space and bandwidth for other things.

[paul34 @ Nov 30th 2007 4:37PM]

What happens after the 9 series? A drop of the GeForce name? Eh?

[Ray Brevton @ Nov 30th 2007 4:42PM]

it'll be called x800! Ha!

[Ayle @ Nov 30th 2007 5:38PM]

Or maybe it will be called the g10?

[Demeth @ Nov 30th 2007 6:27PM]

GeForce 10..?

[ethana2 @ Nov 30th 2007 6:57PM]

nVidia GFX (insert name of dog-like creature here)

[Daniel Filip @ Dec 9th 2007 3:20PM]

Gef Vista

[kojo87 @ Nov 30th 2007 4:42PM]

damn. just when i thought AMD was catching up. if AMD can really get a handle on their HD3800 series, and the Ge Force 9 series doesnt suck, the GPU market should get a whole lot more interesting.

im still leaning towards a HD3870 but we'll see how this news plays out.

[Dustin Frazier @ Nov 30th 2007 5:16PM]

Catching up? To what? They are so far behind that their best isn't even on par with a mediocre card from their competition. I don't care which company comes out with it but I am ready for the next enthusiast cards to come out already. I am bored with my ultras and am ready to upgrade. Does it really take more than a year to beat the 8800 series? The current trend of releasing midrange cards that only perform well with no AA and at low resolutions is frustrating. I wish Intel would hurry up and jump into the discrete graphics market to light a fire under Nvidia's butt. Sadly, ATI has proven that they can't do this.

[Wwhat @ Nov 30th 2007 5:27PM]

Meanwhile it seems it's 7 more month before nvidia catches up to include DX10.1 and shaders4.1.
Typical ATI/AMD to be ahead where it doesn't help though isn't it?

[Zeus the God @ Nov 30th 2007 10:38PM]

Dustin, while I'm a die-hard Nvidia fan, ATI is most definitely catching up with the 150-200 dollar HD 3800 series' terrific price performance ratio. Easily smoking the 8600GTS of all clocks and brands (3870 that is) and still being cheaper, ATI has killed that part of the market. If they can release another board for roughly 250 bucks that performs roughly as well as the GT/GTX, then the will have a real competitor with the fact that they have DDR4 cards.

[Dustin Frazier @ Dec 1st 2007 4:51AM]

I understand what you're saying, but I just don't care about the midrange market, never have. I don't think that it's too much to ask that ATI come out with a 8800 killer in more than a years time. If not an 8800 killer then at least a card that is on par with it. Buying midrange at this point is a waste in my opinion. High end cards like gtx and ultra are having a rough time with new games at high res and candy turned on. Midrange absolutely sucks at it from both companies. If you buy a midrange card now, you are basically guaranteeing that you won't be able to play next years fall game lineup or be able to upgrade to a decent screen res. Decent being 1920x1080/1200 and up. If you haven't already jumped on the high end band wagon earlier this year then it would be better to just wait for the new high end to come out. I haven't always felt this way about midrange, because at one point in time midrange actually had some sustainability. But today's midrange just can't perform with today's games. ATI shouldn't be congratulated for releasing obsolescences to the masses.

[kojo87 @ Dec 1st 2007 12:04PM]

i dont really see how the HD3870 is a midrange card but whatever. you also have to look at the fact that the card costs $220 and is also the most efficient Crossfire/SLI card on the market. when you set up two of these suckers you get an 80-85% performance increase. there are also dual GPU boards coming out and you can crossfire up to four boards at once (mobo permitting of course) so theoretically you could run eight GPUs at the same time. the dual GPU boards are gonna cost around $400 so that would run you about $1600 but then you can run Crisis 2 at what ever resolution you want buddy!. meanwhile im very interested in getting two HD3870s and putting them on my Crossfire mobo and playing at 1440x900.

it seems like too many people are into PC gaming just so they can say their rig can run at higher FPS at a higher res than yours.

[Dustin Frazier @ Dec 1st 2007 7:06PM]

The 3870 isn't midrange for ATI, but it is midrange when compared to the rest of the market. That was my point. A single GTX still beats the the 3870 in crossfire in almost every game. In modern games like Crysis, A single 8800gt is almost equal to a 3870 crossfire setup http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews/3870-XXX/cfgood.php. The 3870 does absolutely horribly with any AA enabled and can perform only when in dx9 mode and no eye candy turned on. This isn't my opinion but evident from every single benchmark posted on the net. I think the 8800GT performs miserably as well but it isn't Nvidia's high end either. But at 1440x900 any of these midrange cards is overkill.

[Mr. B @ Nov 30th 2007 5:13PM]

Yes, but will it run Crysis?